The Government of India took close to a fortnight ~ eleven days to be precise ~ to come up with a response to the ferment in Darjeeling.

Even so, it wasn’t the Prime Minister who tweeted on the arson and stone-throwing, but the Home Minister, now nursing a leg fracture.

Rajnath Singh’s belated presentation was rather too generic, almost inadequate, when the circumstances warranted a far more robust response from the person helming the government. On closer reflection, it wasn’t the deaths of GJMM activists in police firing or the seizure of arms from Bimal Gurung’s residence that prompted Singh to speak, but a telephone call from Mamata Banerjee.

We do not know what exactly transpired during the half-hour conversation with the West Bengal Chief Minister on Sunday morning, yet we do know that it was followed by a bout of homilies that are applicable even during a scuffle on the streets.

In a word, Singh’s tweets were much too mild considering the enormity of the crisis that now confronts the West Bengal government.

“Nobody should resort to violence,” was the Home Minister’s advice. “Every issue can be resolved through mutual dialogue.”

However rational, the nub of the matter must be that the concept of dialogue has regretfully come a cropper in Darjeeling from Jyoti Basu to Mamata Banerjee via the ten-year dispensation of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Arguably, the call to abjure violence might just have a certain political connotation.

Is the national leadership of the BJP trying to distance itself from its ally, GJMM’s demand for another re-drawing of the boundaries of Bengal? The saffronite MP from Darjeeling, SS Ahluwalia, was after all elected in 2014 with GJMM support.

SIngh’s appeal can therefore be contextualised with the Chief Minister’s statement the previous day ~ “No further division of Bengal will be allowed as long as I am alive.”

It may be politically convenient for the BJP to be ambiguous on the demand for a separate state; but the party must be acutely aware that statehood cannot be a decision of the state government alone. The issue is constitutional, one that calls for concerted reflection by the state, the Assembly, Parliament, and the Centre.

The crisis is likely to fester as the Home Minister’s appeal for talks has been greeted with profound indifference by the GJMM’s MLA, Amar Singh Rai. He may not have gone off at a tangent, but there is little doubt that he has echoed the dominant sentiment of the morcha.

“I see no reason for us to enter into any dialogue with the state government. We will enter into a dialogue only with the Centre on a single-point agenda ~ a separate state of Gorkhaland.”

If the Centre wants to deflect suspicion that it is somehow behind an ally’s intransigence, it will have to do more to end the crisis.